


Herr Bolzen

by elmey



Category: Semnadstat Mgnoveniy Vesny | Seventeen Moments of Spring
Genre: Gen, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-11
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-14 16:23:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/838920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elmey/pseuds/elmey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Why had the Center offered this... spyhole, he thought impatiently, that's all it was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Herr Bolzen

 

Paris, November 1953

"Physics", the French Rezident said, his eyes sliding to the young man hanging up his wet coat at the far wall of the café. “One year of post graduate work with de Broglie. I’m sure Herr Bolzen can appreciate the signal honor.” When no response was forthcoming, he hesitated, then stood up. “You'll excuse me a moment, I have a telephone call to make.”

Left alone at the table, he pulled cigarettes and matches from his pocket, pleased to see his hands were steady. He'd known him immediately; the round, aggressive chin, the ripe wheat hair--he had the look of his mother’s kind, not just their name. The hair was too long; he almost smiled, hers had been her vanity. An impatient hand brushed out the droplets of water; a laugh as he joined the friends waving him to their table. He looked like what he was, a student. Hardly more than a boy.

It was drafty in the café. His fingertips were numb, he barely felt them as he lit his cigarette, then shook the match to douse the flame. They hadn't been right since the winter. Freedom to smoke, such a small freedom, but one he'd missed out of all proportion in the cell on Lubyanka Square. The craving had never left him, he'd taken the habit up again immediately on his release. American Pall Malls now; it hadn't started as a provocation, the the way Schellenberg had always paraded his Camels; Herr Bolzen was the Americans' friend, of course he smoked their cigarettes, but it was another small thing they'd held against him. Rehabilitated now, he refused to switch; perhaps it was a provocation after all.

As the Rezident made his way towards the telephone kiosk in the back, the young man looked up, and a furrow appeared between his brows. Something changed in him, his face closed and he shuttered his eyes. He looked different from his friends suddenly, self contained, alone. Not just a student then. For a moment he felt as though he were falling, he caught himself, why was he surprised; a year in Paris would have to be paid for. It startled him to feel the matches cascade through his fingers to the table, he'd crushed the box in his hands.

The boy's cool gaze moved casually in his direction, the direction the Rezident had come from, assessing, cataloguing, but without recognition. He could barely be seen back here in the corner, would hardly be remembered as the man who'd held a one year old in his arms for a day. He looked down at the matches on the table, his hand automatically beginning to form patterns with them, another habit he'd never lost. He'd expected to see a stranger, not her clear blue gaze, the tilt of her head, this aching sense of familiarity.

She was gone when he returned more than a year after the war ended. There'd been no messages, no postcard from Stockholm saying _Uncle Gustav gave up on the garden, he says nothing grows in the shade_. But he'd sent no message either. He'd tried; the courier in Bern watching him--his soft voice so concerned, so uncomfortable as he waited. But he'd found no words for a truth that ran deeper than the games he had to play.

He hadn't inquired, hadn't searched. He'd lost himself. It was she who'd kept Isaev alive. Without her... twenty years had slipped through his fingers, his memories those of a man who didn't exist. Fragments, floating in and out of his thoughts, indelible, but real only to him. He'd gone back to Berlin. Standartenfürer Stirlitz might have been too much for the Americans to swallow, but they liked Herr Bolzen--such a good businessman, so gracious, such reliable contacts in the East--he'd made himself an asset, too important an opportunity for the Center to let pass. Letting go was all he could give her. Easier for her than another goodbye. He was good at letting go.

He barely noticed when the Rezident came back to the table, pulled out his chair, and dropped into it. "My cousin says the package from Tehran arrived, we can pick it up anytime."

Why had the Center offered this... spyhole, he thought impatiently, that's all it was. Reward, incentive, warning? At one time he thought he knew, but the certainty had faded as it had in so many things. He'd already agreed to the mission in Tehran, a new business opportunity for Herr Bolzen, what luck to see his American friends again.

He had chosen duty a long time ago, he had no choice but to hold onto it now.

The Rezident was nervous, patted his pocket, looked longingly at the package of Pall Malls on the table. "The Center advised, " he began, stopped, coughed and started up again, "they advised, that should Herr Bolzen want to meet the young man..."

" _Herr Bolzen?_ " his voice was soft, but something in his eyes made the Rezident look away.

He turned to the boy again. Physics, it pleased him that it should be physics. _Choose wisely_ , he wanted to say... but there was nothing he had the right to say. He wondered what she'd told him, hoped she'd been kind. _Our children will hate us,_ the old devil Müller had said, the glitter of Bormann's gold in his eyes. _They don't need us and our ideas, they'll never forgive us for the hunger and bombs._ Not just hunger and bombs he thought, looking past the Rezident at his son. The hunger and bombs had ended; perhaps what they couldn't forgive was the silence and ghosts.

Herr Bolzen, not Isaev. He looked down at the table, at the patterns he'd formed with his matches. Flying cranes, the zig zag of their matchstick wings stark against the dark wood. He swept them into a pile. He'd pick up a new box of matches on the way out. Herr Bolzen was ready to go.

He would not cheat him with a final lie.

 

The night before he left for Tehran, Isaev dreamed. He was standing in the doorway of a small farm, watching a boy with ripe wheat hair walk to the edge of a blue pool. The boy raised his arms, preparing to dive. He wanted to warn him, of how deep the water was, how cold, but all he did was watch. The boy leapt but never hit the water, instead he flew, a graceful bird now, flew until he met the flock that had been circling above. They turned, all together, swept across the sky in front of him and then flew away; and he watched them until they disappeared from his sight.

 

_Alles war schön an diesem einzigen Abend, ma soeur_   
_Nachher nie wieder und nie zuvor –_   
_Freilich: mir blieben nur mehr die großen Vögel_   
_Die abends im dunklen Himmel Hunger haben._

_\---Bertold Brecht (Ich habe dich nie je so geliebt)_

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Azdak and to Annie for their suggestions and support.


End file.
